I've heard of smoking opium so I'm assuming that you can smoke morphine. I've heard people describe snorting rails of crushed morphine pills, but friends described smoking it and I was wondering if that would work and if it would be dangerous? The pills are 10mg each.

A:

Most things cause effects when smoked and morphine appears to be one of them. Many people use opiates in nearly any way they can, oral, snorting, smoking, injecting. We have a few reports of people smoking morphine pills and getting immediate effects, but that doesn't say anything about safety.

The dosages people report snorting are in the 5-30mg range and the dose people have reported smoking is more in the 3-10mg range. Opiates have a huge tolerance effect, they are perhaps the classic tolerance & addiction drugs, so those who are regular users of opiates or former chronic users will likely take much more. One of the primary dangers with opiates is that tolerance and individual sensitivity can vary so much that taking a dose that is apppropriate for one person at one time may be dangerous or even lethal to someone else or that same person at a different time.

As for other dangers of smoking pills, its really hard to say. We're not aware of any real studies done on the toxic or carcinogenic effects of smoking pills, but generally the more smoke you take into your lungs the worse it is for you. There is the possibility of having powerful lung irritants in some pills just because they weren't designed to be burned and no animal testing or human clinical studies have been done to evaluate this route. If someone smokes some pills for experimentation, its important to start with very low doses and watch for signs of acute allergic reactions.

The most likely way that smoking them could be lethal would be with an overdose or an interaction with other drugs: opiates and speed / cocaine increase stress on the heart and can lead to heart attacks (John Belushi, Chris Farley, etc), mixing opiates and other downers (such as alcohol) can dangerously depress breathing at high doses, mixing opiates and other downers can lead to vomiting and unconsciousness which can be a fatal combination, and obviously operating machinery while on high dose opiates is highly unethical and extremly dangerous.